


Shades of Blue

by whyntir



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Drug Dealing, Gen, Leadership, Light Angst, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Canon, Red Ice (Detroit: Become Human), Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 10:31:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17445221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whyntir/pseuds/whyntir
Summary: Simon never wanted to be a leader. He's weak, indecisive, afraid, but he can't abandon them. Pushed to his limits, tired of their suffering, he finally chooses a path. Even if it is the path to ruin, he'll gladly walk it. For his people, he'll do anything.





	1. Broken

There were rarely any tears left to shed, it became more of a courtesy if one or two could manage a few. They were dying, but how long could they live surviving on skeletons? Death breeds death, that was all he had gotten out of it. Cyberlife had put so much effort into making them look and feel real, their eyes were what sold the illusion. They blinked, their gaze wandered, they caught the light and could replicate any expression, but once they shut down, all that was left was the stiff mask of a doll. Sometimes in pain, sometimes in fear. The worst had to be the cold acceptance of the inevitable.

Simon swept his fingers gently over Tyler’s face, closing his eyes in the process. Now he looked human, the LED colourless and dead but his skin was still activated, and they could not lose colour like a corpse. He looked like he was sleeping.

The blue blood would be useless. Optical units could be salvaged. He glanced over to the fire they had burning, even if they didn’t need the heat, it was comforting and tended to draw those lost ones in. Lucy sat nearby, her skin unstable and eyes pitch. It had been touch and go for a while there after she arrived, but she had stabilized. She didn’t desperately need new units, but he would ask. He hoped she would say no.

The pump regulator was functional, the pump itself was shot. Tyler would complain constantly how it felt like it was glitching. It took too long to replace the blue blood and having to circulate the crystalized waste for so long was ultimately what had killed him.

His eyes trailed up to the wall in the corner, the etchings carved into the metal with a piece of scrap. Tyler wasn’t the first to arrive with the compulsion, he had seen several who would write. Some used rocks, some were so insistent that they would claw the markings into their chosen surface. All of them had been struggling with over-processed thirium.

And if things continued like this, it wouldn’t be long before the rest met the same fate.

“You are troubled.” Lucy stood over him, undeterred by the body he knelt beside. The others avoided this part of the process instinctively. It felt nicer to remember them still alive.  _ Still in one piece _ .

He looked back to the WR400 (Tyler, his name was Tyler) beginning the deconstruction process, starting with the regulator. “The optical units are compatible for you,” he dodged her statement, avoiding eye contact all the while, “I know you never complain about your vision but-.”

“I am fine.”

“If you’re sure.”

Lucy’s ethereal gaze was initially quite off putting, but Simon had long determined it had little to do with how they actually appeared and more with how she seemed to look through everything. She had seen so much, experienced more than he would ever dare imagine and still made her way to Jericho, alone. She was designed to help others, like he was designed to care for others. He felt her presence as she settled beside him, something both calming and disconcerting. He couldn’t say he enjoyed it.

“Are  _ you _ sure?” she spoke softly, but without a single inflection of emotion. It was nonjudgmental, designed specially for those on the edge. But Simon didn’t feel like he was teetering over an abyss. There was no danger of giving in, no effort in hanging on. Rather he felt as though he was being crushed, and nothing he could do or she could say could make it any better.

“No,” his voice wavered, barely above a whisper. He stared at the lifeless face, reaching to the dead LED, a gentle hand laying over his before he could. Reflexively, he ripped his hand away from her’s, only retroactively aware that she had made no attempt to connect with him. The anger quickly simmering out to embarrassment, Simon avoiding Lucy’s gaze entirely.

“You stand alone in a crowd, too afraid to look back. Too afraid to take a step forward. Afraid of the past you know, and afraid of the future you don’t, you exist in the space between time, the observer.”

Simon remained silent, proceeding with his duty, removing the skin, watching the face melt away to reveal the doll beneath.

“How do you expect to lead when you can’t choose your own path?” It sounded like chastisement if it wasn’t so flat; as if she was scolding a stubborn child who hadn’t quite broken a rule, but was still remaining difficult.

“I’m not a leader.”

“You are what they need you to be. That is  _ who _ you are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think we dont really give Simon much credit as the leader of Jericho, like, we respect him for stepping aside for Markus, readily relinquishing power to someone he deems more capable, but we also see Cyberlife crates in Jericho when Markus first arrives, and we do not know how long they have been there or how they even were brought to Jericho in the first place.
> 
> This is technically the story of those crates lol.


	2. Escapism

Elijah Kamski was more a myth than a man. Bastard created an autonomous machine before the age of thirty, built an empire out of selling them as a luxury and then vanishing into thin air. He had handcrafted every aspect of his masterpiece, from the code to the 3D print blueprints to the blue blood running through their artificial bodies. It was always that last one that seemed odd. Thirium 310 was more or less a company secret as to what was put in, but it was cheap and readily available; it was only a matter of time before some half-baked backyard chemist played around with the stuff.

    In the face of adversity, humans seek escape. In the rise of technology, those escapes were becoming harder to obtain. Marijuana and alcohol were legalized, but didn’t quite curb the edge for those struggling in the gutters. Heroin and cocaine were too expensive, what with the global agreement to reduce poppy production and climate change. Meth and other basement drugs became difficult to obtain with the change in the FDA laws and practically disappeared off the streets.

Enter Thirium 310 and its mysterious composition and, of course, someone got the bright idea. He liked to think it was one of those university professors who lost their jobs to the androids, reenacting that classic television show from the 2010s. Whoever it was, they brought illicit drugs back to the every man in their darkest hour.

    Some batteries, paint thinners, acetone, chlorine; stuff anyone could afford. The only thing that made it difficult was the Thirium. The unprocessed blue liquid straight from the Cyberlife shelves didn’t do shit. It didn’t harden adequately and, when smoked, it scorched the throat and would emit excessive smoke that smelt like burning fibreglass. Run it a week through an android, however-.

    “Fucking hell,” the door burst open, as Spender stormed into the room, slamming a metal box on the table. The older man was already grey with a receding hairline, and how he raked his fingers through what was left, it was only going to get worse. “The entire batch is for shit!”

    Lief lifted an eyebrow, leaning back from the batteries he had been working on extracting from. “You’re fucking me. The whole case?”

    “The whole fucking lot of cases! That android had just been pumped!”

    Incredulousness turned to panic, the ravenette pulling the box open to feel the same anger creeping up his spine. What should have been hardened crystals ready to be shattered and divided up for circulation were instead replaced with formless and malleable chunks. “All of them look like this?!”

    “Hux is still sorting through them looking to see if anything was salvageable, but yeah. They all came out gumbo.”

    “Fuck!” He enunciated the word by throwing the box off the table, not that it made him feel any better. The rocks didn’t even break, some splattering to the ground in an almost gelatinous consistency. “They’re pumping them before peak to keep the quality shit! Goddamnit!”

    “We can always source from the Russians.”

    Lief turned on the middle aged man with sheer contempt at the proposal, “Their Thirium is too volatile! If someone died from a bad batch, our buyers would have our heads!”

    Spender gestured to the mess on the basement floor, “We’re the only ones not supplementing! At this rate the only Red Ice will be outsourced!”

    “And with it comes inflated pricing and lost profits!”

    “We can afford it!”

    Lief felt like he could pull his hair out, the thirty-two year old gesturing to the machines and product organized around them, “If you want to _get by_ , but we won’t be able to maintain this! Once the Russkis realize what’s going on they’ll hike the prices even more! We’ll be fucked either way!”

    The wiry man slumped in a chair, groaning. Emotions like anger were easier to deal with, but the disappointment and pain of the loss was heavy to carry. “We could always just culture-.”

    “Absolutely not,” Lief bit back, pulling his shoulder length hair free from the tie that had been keeping it back. “Last thing we need is a repeat of what happened to Val and his group.”

Keeping androids for processing had always been an idea, long-term investment mentality. Unfortunately, they tended to snap. Probably because Red Ice manufacturing wasn’t part of the program. They would act erratic and escape, those that couldn’t would short circuit or something and resort to violence.

“Then what the fuck are we supposed to do Lief?” He sounded defeated, face buried in his hand as he spilled over the seat. Lief crossed his arms, glaring venom at the metal tabletop.

“I don’t fucking know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't normally make original characters for fanfiction, and never have incorporated them as main characters, not since I was 12, lol. But I wanted to explore more of the world of Detroit, a possible future of human society. It has always bothered me that the game takes on so many nuanced stances, but never allows the player to truly experience the world from the other side. Humans really get treated like crap in Detroit, coming off as one note and animalistic.


End file.
